


Girls Don't Cry

by thestarsjustblinkforus



Series: 90's Amis [4]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: 90's Amis, Angst, Comfort, F/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 20:10:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3501302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsjustblinkforus/pseuds/thestarsjustblinkforus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She doesn’t cry.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Ever.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>She learned long ago that tears don’t do shit. She learned long ago to dig her nails into her palms when she felt them coming, to bite her lip hard and concentrate on how that feels instead of her stupid clenching heart and it’s a trick she hasn’t even really needed to use in years because things… things don’t touch her anymore. Not really. Not deep enough to cut.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>Not until fucking Marius Pontmercy came along and fucked everything up…</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Girls Don't Cry

She doesn’t cry.

Ever.

She learned long ago that tears don’t do shit. She learned long ago to dig her nails into her palms when she felt them coming, to bite her lip  _hard_  and concentrate on how  _that_  feels instead of her stupid clenching heart and it’s a trick she hasn’t even really needed to use in years because things… things don’t touch her anymore. Not really. Not deep enough to  _cut._

Not until fucking  _Marius Pontmercy_  came along and fucked everything up…

She shrugs out of her puffy coat, not bothering to turn on the light because the curtains have been flung back and the streetlamp outside her window lights up the whole room anyway in a sickly yellow-green glow that feels appropriate for her mood, and she kicks the door shut behind her, unshed tears stinging her throat like razorblades, and  ** _Fuck you, Fuck you, Fuck you…_**

She just wants to go to sleep and forget this stupid night ever happened.

She gets undressed quickly, shucks off her sweater and flings it to the floor. Her pants get the same treatment and she kicks them viciously away from her, stripping down to her underwear and an old Screeching Weasel t-shirt before she remembers that she gave her flannel to Azelma because she’s sick again and  _fuck_ it’s the only one she  _has…_  It’s cold in her room, always  _so cold_ , she swears hers is the only one in the whole house where the radiator doesn’t work. She considers putting her coat back on when she hears a noise from the bed and looks over to see the shape of Parnasse there in it pressed up against the wall as always leaving her more room than she actually needs. She didn’t know he was going to be here tonight. She never knows when it’s a Parnasse night, but she’s not complaining because now she won’t need the flannel. Parnasse is a  _furnace._

She clambers in quickly under the covers, her knee butting up against the small of his back, and he grumbles an automatic  _fuck off_ that she doesn’t respond to which is a  _mistake_  because now he’ll know there’s something  _wrong._ Even as she thinks it she feels him go uncomfortably still, waiting for her to snap at him, but she just can’t summon the energy.

She burrows down hoping he’ll just ignore her like he usually does and finds her side of the bed already warm. She tells herself he was just taking advantage of having the whole bed for once, but… it wouldn’t be unlike him to do something like that. To be thoughtful like that. He doesn’t do it often, and it’s usually in the form of trinkets for Gavroche or Azelma if he does it at all, little things like a tiny army man with a working parachute hidden in a pocket, easy to miss things like a new ribbon tangled in with the old frayed ones, and she finds herself almost mad about it now, about being on the receiving end of one of his random…  _whatevers_ tonight of all fucking nights because she can handle a lot of things and  _does_ regularly but someone being nice to her right now when it’s the whole reason she’s in this mess in the first place…

Her eyes immediately start watering again and she claws at her palms, bites her lip  _hard_  because  _no no fucking NO_. She is  _not_  going to cry for the first time in years over something as fucking stupid as  _Marius Pontmercy loving someone else_  and _fuck Parnasse too_  for making her feel looked after, making it easier to give  _in_ to this _…_

Her mother always told her she’d follow around the first person to show her an ounce of kindness like a cat in heat and she’s utterly disgusted with herself because she turned out to be right. He  _smiled_  at her. Shyly. He _held a_   _door for her._  And lost hold of it before she even got to it, but still. He scrambled back up the steps to try again and that’s all he had to fucking do and she was basically  _gone_ from that moment forward.

_“I’m such an asshole…”_  she whispers into her pillow before she can stop herself, because apparently tonight is full of her  _not being able to stop herself_ , and he shifts behind her, the sudden intense heat against her back telling her how close he actually is. She thinks about spitting at him to fuck off too, even opens her mouth to do it, but a shuddering breath comes out instead and  _shit.._.  _shit shit shit._

“You crying?” He says it in that voice he has - that voice he puts on sometimes that’s flat and empty of anything but the words themselves and she spits out over a hiccup of breath, “Fuck off  _no.”_

“Fuck off yourself, I can  _hear_  you.”

His hand lands hesitantly on her shoulder after a moment when she doesn’t answer, light and barely there at all, ready to be gone or to fly up and protect his face if she turns on him which she hasn’t done yet even though it’s been nearly three months of this, which is a record for her not going off on one of her Father’s _people,_  but he’s also never actually touched her before so he’s probably right to be cautious. Especially since she basically told him that first night if he so much as _thought_  about it she’d cut off an appendage. He’s risking bodily harm to be comforting or whatever which means it must be really fucking obvious what a fucking baby she is because Parnasse is only ever really intentionally nice to Gavroche and Azemla who’re  _kids,_  and even though he’s only like two years older than her he thinks of her like that too, she’s sure of it. Like she’s a kid too. This just  _proves_  it.

She rolls onto her back to tell him she’s  _not_ , to tell him that she’s  _allowed to be stupid in her own fucking bedroom if she wants_  and his hand slides over her collarbone at the sudden movement, fingers catching on the thin chain around her neck as he lifts it quickly away. The pendent he gave her for Christmas hangs down and swings a little between his hand and her throat, the silver setting shining in the ugly light.

“You kept it…” he murmurs and he doesn’t sound like a robot anymore, he sounds like Parnasse on the porch when they smoke together sometimes.

He probably thought she sold it within a day of finding it inside the green silk pouch (which has already disappeared) tucked inside her boot Christmas morning. He probably got a more expensive one for her on purpose thinking she  _would_ , and to be honest it’s crossed her mind when things have gotten especially tight, but she likes it too much. It’s the only nice thing she owns and even though she mostly wears it under her clothes, sometimes she likes to take it out and just look at it, likes to study the rich warm color of it and the way it seems to shift in the light as she turns it so she can trace the thin delicate thread of silver twisting around it with her fingernail.

Marius caught her playing with it once and told her that the gemstone looked like her eyes.

So basically she’s never going to fucking sell it.

Parnasse twists his wrist to catch it in his palm still hovering over her sternum and asks, “What happened?” as he weighs it like he likes the weight of it, like she likes the weight of it, careful not to let his knuckles brush her skin as he does and she mutters, “Nothing.”

“It made you cry.” Pause. “I didn’t think you do that.”

“I  _don’t,_ ” she snaps and after a moment he drops the pendent and starts to turn and roll back to his side of the bed, a silent  _whatever_  radiating off him like a shout because he always speaks loudest when he’s not saying anything at all, and she catches his hand before he can go too far.

She doesn’t know why she does it and she doesn’t know why he lets her. They  _don’t_  touch each other. Ever. His hand on her shoulder was crossing a line as it is but this… this is leaping over it and Flashdancing around on the other side because she wasn’t the only one tossing out warnings that first night about  _touching,_  but still she doesn’t let go. She doesn’t know why the thought of him turning his back on her right now makes her feel like vomiting but it does, and she  _really_  fucking doesn’t know why she blurts out, “A boy I like doesn’t like me,” because it’s so _stupid_ , she feels so  _stupid_  because this is  _stupid_   _high school shit_  and it sounds even _stupider_  when she says it out loud.

She’s about to fling his hand away and curl back up on her side to die of embarrassment which,  _why the fuck does she even care what he thinks anyway_ , when he says, in a weird mix between his robot voice and his Parnasse voice, almost like he can’t decide which to be, “You want me to take care of him for you?” and her stomach clenches because she can’t tell if he’s  _kidding_.

“I can take care of it  _myself,_ ” she says quickly before he starts getting any ideas a nd he smiles a small smile at that, a smile that’s barely a smile at all but more of a suggestion of one and it’s not mocking or patronizing like she always half expects.

“I know you can,” and then, quietly, seriously,“You don’t need him. You don’t need anyone.”

And she nods because she knows it for what it is.  _Advice_. Parnasse is big on self preservation. It’s one of the things that makes her not trust him as far as she can throw him. His loyalties towards her family will only ever extend so far, but a part of her admires him for it. She wishes she could just glide through life like that, untouched, untethered, unmarred. Or at least be able to pull off looking like she is. She’s not an idiot (most of the time) and she’s not naive ( _most_  of the time). She’s seen the scars on his back when she’s lifted the covers, bit her tongue against snapping at him not to bleed on her sheets a few weeks ago when she saw the gauze on his back, a precise red line in the shape of a stab wound seeping through.

She’s seen the bruises on his ribs when she’s watched him getting dressed from under her eyelashes in the morning, marked how familiar the patterns of them are. It’s not personal or targeted. He’s in training. It’s something all members of the Patron-Minette have to go through when they’re new and he bears it just as well as anyone she’s ever seen, if not  _better_.

All in a day’s  _whatever._ Or whatever.

Flip, spark, inhalation and a passing of the cigarette over to her.

It’s easy to forget that this shit isn’t normal when it’s all you’ve ever known, b ut then sometimes she wonders if it actually  _is._  R’s always going on about how people are inherently violent and shitty in a way that makes her think he’s speaking from experience and she’s nodded along quick enough, thrown in some  _fuck yeah they are_ ’s even as the kid with the John Lennon glasses bites his lip and shakes his head in disagreement, already mentally compiling a list of  _reasons why they’re wrong_ , as J murmurs, “ _I don’t want to believe that…”_  and Pontmercy doesn’t say a word at all.

Pontmercy rarely says  _anything_  except when he’s one on one with someone. Like he doesn’t trust himself not to mess up when there’re several people looking at him which made her feel unreasonably tender towards him even from the very beginning because he looked like… like a  _fawn._  Like  _fucking Bambi_ with his big eyes and his ridiculously long limbs that he never seems to know what to do with.

Pontmercy confides in her about things, about  _shitty things_  because she happened to be there once when he got smacked. He let her in, more than he let the others in, even more than Courf in some ways because she can understand bruises in a way the others can’t. When she found out his normal wasn’t really all that different from hers she felt simultaneously relieved and disappointed that it happens to rich kids too, but Marius just held her hand tighter and apologized like he had anything to do with that shit.

She feels… protective of him. Because he trusted her. He  _trusts_  her and no one does that except for R and maybe J now. He cracked her open with it, made her want to trust  _him_  though she still hasn’t revealed any of her own secrets barring a cigarette burn or two on her forearms, because she just  _can_ ’ _t._

It’s not his fault he didn’t know how she felt because she doesn’t tell anyone anything that actually  _matters._  It’s all snark and boasting. Eyerolls and cigarette smoke blown in the general direction of whoever is irritating her the most at the moment, which is Bahorel lately.

And it’s not Marius’s fault he doesn’t want her back because, really, who fucking would?

She looks at Parnasse’s hand in her hand, pliant and  _warm,_  and she’s so… lonely… always  _so fucking lonely_  and even more so tonight because of her stupid fucking  _confession_  and suddenly all she wants to do is pretend for a while, because apart from fucking up her hands with stabbing her nails into them when she feels like crying, a game of pretend can sometimes do the trick too.

Pretend it’s funny.

Pretend it didn’t hurt.

Pretend he didn’t tell you he met someone.

_“I think… I think I’m in love with her ‘Ponine…”_

Pretend it’s  _you_. Pretend you’re the one that’s wanted…

She slowly brings his hand to her breast and leaves it there with a trailing away of her fingers from his. A fter a moment, an  _excruciatingly_   _long_  moment where she holds her breath for what feels like forever, his thumb brushes lightly over her nipple, circling it gently until it hardens, and she closes her eyes with a bit-back sigh, letting herself  _feel_  it, feel  _something else,_  and she pretends, she pretends…

_“I think… I think I’m in love with you ‘Ponine…”_

He doesn’t try to touch her anywhere else, just keeps circling with his thumb over and over, every once in a while the barest hint of his fingernail through the thin cotton of her t-shirt making her shiver a little and he has not moved his body any closer but she feels him against her wrist, her arm having fallen between them, the silk of his boxers smooth against her skin, the pulsating heat beneath them burning through, but he does not try to get her to do anything about it, and she does not turn her hand into him like she would if he were someone else, if he really were  _him_.

It’s easy imagining him touching her like this though… because Marius would be tentative like this too… and though she’s grateful for it for fantasizing purposes, she doesn’t understand why Parnasse is being so careful. She’s given him  _permission._ He’s not actinghow she thought he would at all. Not that she’s ever thought about what he would be like like this. Montparnasse is one of her  _father’s_ _people._  He’s trash. No matter how many cigarettes they’ve shared, how many half-smiles she’s caught while he’s listened to Gavroche’s exploits presented with a kind of surly matter-of-factness that she can tell he  _loves_ , no matter how many times he’s let Azelma play with his hair… (And h e is so fucking vain the second she loses interest he quickly smooths it back. B ut he still let’s her do it. Every time.)

He let’s Gavroche practice pickpocketing on him and when he catches him out he doesn’t slam his wrist against the wall like her father does, doesn’t smack him on the top of his head like he’s a dog who’s misbehaved. He simply goes back to playing with Gavroche’s gameboy and says, simply,  _again_.

He lets them get away with a lot.

He lets  _her_  get away with a lot.

He knows she tries on his clothes when he’s out of the room. He knows she touches his things. Sometimes she does it right in front of him and she can feel him watching her to make sure she doesn’t  _take,_  but she wouldn’t because she doesn’t do that anymore and he knows that. Unless it’s cigarettes. She does take his cigarettes.

And then they smoke them on the porch and she  doesn’t want to be thinking of Parnasse right now, she doesn’t  _want_  Parnasse right now…

She takes his hand from her breast and guides it down under the covers, knowing he’ll let her.

He let’s her get away with a lot.

She leads him to the edge of her underwear that’s  _cotton_  not  _silk,_ and she lets go to slide them off her hip far enough to say,  _go ahead then_ as his hand rests low and light on her belly _._ When he doesn’t do anything she opens her eyes to find his waiting for her.

He doesn’t say a word, and she realizes quickly enough that that was all he wanted, her eyes, because once he has them he continues the path she started and her hands curl into her sheets at her sides in readiness. He still does not move his body any closer to hers though she can still  _feel_  him there, more of a press than before, and her mouth falls open with a sharp intake of breath but he doesn’t pause and she thinks,  _Good boy_ , as he continues deeper, as he crooks his finger in a way that lifts the small of her back from the bed and she bites her lips shut breathing hard out of her nose because she can’t make a sound, too many people in the house, always too many people in the house… She can hear her father down the hall with Claquesous muttering about a job gone wrong and she wishes she had her headphones because she doesn’t want to hear about any of that shit and  _oh, ohtwofingers…_

She whimpers, she hums out a shaky breath despite herself and closes her eyes _tight_  because  _Marius… MariusMariusMarius…_  but when she does he  _stops._  She mutters “ _C’mon…_ ” wiggling her hips a little frantically to get it  _back_  but he starts to  _go_  and she grabs his wrist to hold him in place.

And he lets her.

He lets her and she does it for herself, moves on his hand that stays still and taut, takes him in as far as she can stand, pressing her shoulders down down into the mattress as her hips go up up and he gives her the palm of his free hand to bite down on when she threatens to get too loud and she does and he hisses but still doesn’t pull away until she finishes.

Her hand falls from his wrist against her thigh but he doesn’t move away. He stays exactly where he is.

She opens her eyes, her mouth dry and tasting of blood she’s not sure is from her own lips or his hand and his eyes are still there, still waiting for her and only when she meets them again does he  _move_ …

Slowly.

Purposefully.

Over and over and over again oh…

And then, and then suddenly, suddenly  _three_ …

_And_

_And and and and and_

His eyes never leave hers as she comes again, hard, hard _, harder,_  her shoulders leaving the bed completely, drawing her up towards the ceiling as her whole body shudders, as she gasps a handful of choked sobs against her own hand slapped over her mouth before she melts back into the bed again, little aftershocks shaking through her, breathing hard like she’s just run ten blocks from the cops and after a moment he finally withdraws.

She freezes as he climbs over her, her hand still clasped over her mouth, breathing through the loosened slats of her fingers, but he’s careful not to touch as he gets out of the bed.

She turns her head on the pillow to look at him in the gross light from the streetlamp and kind of hates that he still looks really good in it. Parnasse is  _stupid pretty_  like that blonde kid in her history class who is always arguing with the teacher like history is something that can be  _changed,_  and when he goes to the door and opens it the light from the hallway hits him and she can see because she’s looking how very much  _not_  unaffected he is by what just happened, and she felt it, she  _knew,_  but it’s different actually seeing the evidence and it sends another hot jolt through her.

She hears her father call from the kitchen, “Montparnasse, c’mere for a minute,” as he steps out into the hallway. He answers, smoothly, “Just a moment” and then she hears the click of the bathroom door across the way being shut behind him.

Her face feels hot. Everything too hot. She flings off the blankets, exposing herself to the cold winter air and her underwear is still half off, her t-shirt rucked up her belly now from thrashing around and she thinks about taking both off completely. She’s getting cold again but she thinks about letting him find her like that when he comes back because she wants  _more_  because that last time, that last time looking up at him…

She does  _not_  feel like crying anymore.

She feels exhausted and rung out but not in the utterly pathetic way she did an hour ago and she mentally adds  _Sex_  to the list of ways to distract herself when she feels like this again… Because she will. Because she can’t  _not_  see him, be near him whenever she can, however she can, and it’s going to be so much  _worse_  now, and she amends it to  _Sex with Parnasse_  because,  _fuck,_  she’s still shaking like a leaf…

And then she hears her father’s rusty laugh echo down the hallway and promptly scratches it out.

She doesn’t want to get involved with Montparnasse.

She doesn’t want to get involved with  _any_  of them.

He might not seem as bad as the others sometimes, and he might have just… but he’s still  _one of them_.

Her whole thing this year of deciding to actually try and be friends with people at school is a distancing tactic, a way of having somewhere else to  _go._ Even as much as this hurts, as much as it sucks out there sometimes she doesn’t want anything _here._  She already has Gavroche and Azelma making her keep one foot in the door. She doesn’t need anyone else. She doesn’t  _want_  anyone else.

Montparnasse is cigarettes and guarded conversations. Stab wounds and bruises. Armed robbery and probably  _worse_. He’s not whatever this was.

The bathroom door opens and she holds her breath but his footsteps pad down the hall to the kitchen where they are waiting for him and she has to strain her ears to hear his quick short answers to their questions about what he thinks went wrong, what he would have done if they had used him tonight instead of Babet. When she hears the refrigerator open and the clink of bottles she knows he’s not coming back, and she’s  _not_  disappointed. She pulls the covers back up and spreads out in the center of the bed and it’s still warm from where he was and she falls asleep in it telling herself tomorrow at school she’ll tell Marius she was only kidding. She didn’t mean it the way he thinks. She loves him like a  _friend a_ nd she’s fucking happy for him, fucking  _thrilled,_ and she hopes he and his Disney Princess will be very very happy together. And she’s going to tell Montparnasse…

Nothing.

She’s pretty certain he’s not going to say a word in the morning, so neither will she.

She’ll stay on her side of the bed and he’ll stay on his.

She just has to not reach.

**Author's Note:**

> 90's Amis Verse - come say hi on [tumblr](http://90samis.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
